It's a page turner and well suited for a beach read but overall very annoying and predictable.

I liked the concept of what happens AFTER a person is held in captivity but this was just like reading the script of a bad Lifetime movie. I guessed the twist early on and kept hoping to be proven wrong but that wasn't the case. The more the network of evil was exposed the more ridiculous it seemed (like everybody in the book was involved) and it was reminding me of that bad TV show called The Following that was on this year.

It's not a total waste of time but its close.
( )

This one kept me up reading late into the night. Disturbing story but likable characters. ( )

Well I was roped in by the "like Gone Girl but even more disturbing" hype. I suppose I should've known better. An attention grabbing first page, then it sort of goes nowhere. This book has "first time author" written all over it. I've read far worse, but this book is just not very accomplished.

My main problem is that the very dark subject matter is grafted onto a chatty first person narrative style better suited to chick lit, and it just doesn't work. For example, in chapter 9, we are cheerily informed that even though the damaged, traumatized protagonists car's gas tank is not yet half empty, she takes advantage of an "unusually pristine BP" to top off. Who cares? This is not relevant. The author then clumsily attempts to graft on some heavy-handed psychological insight with the following: "I noticed with no small satisfaction that the attendant was locked away from me behind unbreakable plexiglass. If only everyone could be like that". Umm okay.

That is the point where I stopped reading, and added The Never List to my "never read" list. Sorry, couldn't resist that. ( )

3.75*
This was pretty intense! I've owned this for something like 5 years and haven't read it, and I wish I would have read it sooner. For some reason I thought it was YA - it is definitely NOT! This is one of the darkest books I've read in while with it's very triggering references to BDSM as well as many forms of torture. The writing was easy to read and definitely not over the top, which was appreciated as this could have gotten even more gory. I appreciate that the time lapses between scenes weren't drawn out and it was very easy to follow when we were getting a flashback - the book I read before this was very clumsy in the attempts to show flashbacks. There was something I seemed to have missed though and I'm not sure if that's because there were so many minor characters that were being investigated? At one point some people named Ray (and I don't remember who) were being questioned and the main character was suddenly at their house, and I couldn't remember at all how they were related to the investigation. Did I miss something from earlier on? Also, they go to investigate an ex-wife of the main antagonist but I barely remember her being mentioned and definitely didn't remember her being brought up as someone they needed to investigate. Maybe I was half falling asleep during the times they were brought up earlier in the book... Either way, I had a difficult time keeping certain people straight and why they were important.

This book also had something in it that the previous book I read had - law enforcement giving information to civilians as an investigation was pending. There were a few times that the information given was from a case in the past which had been closed, but I find it very difficult to suspend my belief and just go with the facts that an FBI agent would give information from a pending investigation to a civilian.

But even so, I found the majority of this book to be a page turner with compelling characters that I wanted to learn more about. I didn't find the ending to be a huge surprise (no spoilers), but it didn't totally let my down either. ( )

For me this was a book that was hard to put down. A gripping story ( )